Millimeter-wave frequencies generally refer to signals in the frequency band between approximately 30 GHz to 300 GHz, which are frequently used in various applications such as wireless personal area networks (“WPANs”), automobile radar, and image sensing. Various LNAs for millimeter waves have been disclosed. For example, millimeter-wave LNAs were initially implemented in Group III-V compound semiconductors or implemented using cascode amplifiers based on bipolar junction transistor (“BJT”) technology. However, LNAs implemented using compound III-V semiconductors or BJTs are not easily integrated with the other components of the receiver, especially for digital circuits, resulting in higher implementation costs.
Recent advances in complementary metal oxide semiconductor (“CMOS”) technologies have enabled millimeter-wave integrated circuits to be implemented at lower costs as multi-stage LNAs. However, these multi-stage LNAs experience passive losses across the input, inter-stage, and output matching networks, which lead to insufficient gain. Consequently, the amplitude of the amplified signal after the LNA is too small to be accurately processed by the rest of the circuitry of a receiver.